


I'm Blacking Out As I Transform

by kyanve



Series: Truce [5]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: 'Fear Not' is a perfectly valid form of it, Abrupt Change In States Of Existence/Reality?, Brief Zarkon flashbacks, Canon death depending on how you define death, Gen, I reject Lovecraft's Idea of Eldritch Beings, Shiro and the lion aren't agreeing on it, Shiro rejects any insinuation that anything should slow him down or stop him, This came out way less angst than everyone is probably expecting, death?, eldritch beings are confusing to talk to, even if different states of existence are hard, existential confusion, quite possibly one of the wierdest things I've ever written, weird existential half-comedy, yes I know the warning tags look contradictory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-05
Updated: 2019-02-05
Packaged: 2019-10-22 17:22:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,740
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17666852
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kyanve/pseuds/kyanve
Summary: Truce side story - Shiro's "chapter" for Blackout.Shiro comes out of the fight with Zarkon disoriented and trying to figure out how to navigate a different state of existence, and with a suddenly much different awareness of the Black Lion.The Black Lion, meanwhile, is tiredly trying to keep track of everything and fuss over its tiny things.





	I'm Blacking Out As I Transform

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know how Shiro can turn 'translating his physical body to energy and being stuck as a ghost tagging along with the lion' into something that's mostly weird existential comedy, but apparently he's magic like that.
> 
> Also I didn't ask Bob to show up. Bob does what he wants.

Shiro recognized what was coming before it hit, the blended senses of the lions and the other Paladins bleeding into his own. The cold emptiness the witch and her Druids worked with was unmistakable, familiar in a way that made his stomach lurch in the moment of recognition that wasn't long enough to do anything before it hit besides trying to mentally pull the lions and the others closer - drawing in and bracing for impact.

It wasn't the invasive threads he was most familiar with. It was a whirlpool vortex meant to drag everything down into the dark, a hungry force that had devoured planets; he could feel the lion digging in on him and hastily pulling back even as the massive being was hit itself, the dark sweeping over it like a tsunami, hard enough to throw them both into blank, unaware emptiness.

There had been one too many petty arguments over even more petty pointless grudges thrown his way in the expectation the Great Paladins would arbitrate, with both sides clearly certain he'd take _their_ side. He hadn't even wanted to be here, not when he had his own people to tend to - and his own _family_ to tend to, more importantly.  
At least with some of the pettier Galra lords, he could loom at them and tell them to stop being stupid _because he said so_ and they'd only consider challenging him on it for a brief moment, leaving him free to go back to trying to make sure Honerva was eating and sleeping. 

The balcony was built for someone much shorter and smaller, the railing barely above his knees. The tropical swamp's broad swathes of vibrant green and blue with splashes of brighter colors had once been fascinating; now it was just another reminder he wasn't _home_ , under dusty skies with weathered red rocks and patchy scrub curving around him. 

He didn't even notice he wasn't alone until about the third time Alfor cleared his throat from the entrance to the balcony, knowing better than to startle him. He still almost bristled, dragging anything that wasn't tired irritation with politics back behind long-practiced barriers, ignoring the worried rumble of disapproval from the lion. Alfor was _trying_ to sift at him, at least until the Altean caught bristling he hadn't managed to hide and pulled back mentally. 

"What's wrong?" 

Alfor never was good with boundaries when he'd decided to worry about something, and he had the bad habit of making everyone's problems his business.

"I'm fine, Alfor."

The Altean raised an eyebrow. "You've been brooding worse than I remember seeing since your father was alive. I don't need any powers or bonds to know that's a lie."  
He narrowed his eyes down in a glare, showing teeth for a moment with a growl. "My affairs are none of your concern, Alfor. You have your _own_ people and family to tend to." 

Alfor's posture drained tired, the weight of years showing even more. "That's never been how this worked. We look after each other, that's how we came this far." The Altean took a half-step closer. "We all care about you and miss you when you're gone this much - _I_ miss you. You've never shut me out like this before."

He still wasn’t inclined to betray his word to Honerva, but it was hard to stay angry at Alfor when he was looking like one of Allura's mice that'd just been put through a cold bath. He grimaced with a low rumble. "This isn't anything you can help with. I'll handle it." 

Alfor shifted his jaw, uncomfortable and more worried for it, but after a couple ticks he shook his head with a slow exhale. "If there is anything any of us can help with - _anything_ at all - you'll come to us, right? Can you promise me that?" 

It was a trap; technically, Alfor did have the expertise and knowledge to figure something out ...

But they already knew how he'd react; he had biases and had turned afraid of some legend and the unknown, despite how they'd gained the lions from Alfor himself delving into the unknown against outside concern. 

The lion was making its own frustrated rumbles in the back of his head, and he pointedly ignored it. The beast had been arguing with him for a good decaphoeb now, they both knew it didn't actually _need_ to put anything clearer to its protests than rumbling for him to know what it meant. He'd heard enough times Alfor had bitched or made despairing jokes about divine beings and them not always grasping what it was like for the squishy organic conventionally-physical people to not trust its opinion on everything.

Still, he had some room to maneuver without fighting either of them; he'd keep his word to Honerva, but he might not need to explain everything _if_ there was anything one of them could - and would - _actually_ help with. "You have my word. If there is anything where one of you would help, I will go to you." 

Alfor tilted his head, a faint narrowing and a ping of suspicion and fond frustration at the wording. "Try to remember that you don't have to carry everything yourself, and that it's alright to take a break now and then. I'd like to see you just to go for tea or take a hike in the cliffs for a while, no business or questions, and Allura's missed you, too."  
He tried not to roll his eyes. "If I can wedge in time for pointless frivolity, believe me, you'll be the first to know." 

"Hopefully before I need to start sneaking into the underground gardens on Daibazaal again to convince you to look after yourself and rest now and then." Alfor gave him a lopsided, weak smile; they'd been adolescents, not even grown, the last time he'd done that. Before the lions, before the Coalition and the treaties, back when half of the homeworlds of the Paladins had been at war and Daibazaal and Altea hadn't been incredibly friendly with each other. 

Back when Alfor had been the first friend he'd had that wasn't somehow tied to political strings, the first person that he knew honestly cared about him, by randomly sneaking in and deciding They Were Friends against all logic and sanity.

Alfor hadn't budged on that, not until they'd started drifting apart between duties pulling them different directions and Alfor's mistrust of Honerva's research driving a wedge in. 

Zarkon wasn't a powerless child at the mercy of sharkpit politics and a self-absorbed, paranoid father anymore. "There won't be any need for that, I can assure you."

"If you say so." Alfor raised a hand tentatively before he just went through with the motion, tugging gently at Zarkon's wrist. "Gyrgan's ended up with the Tathi and Dargax representatives - I'm sure he can keep them occupied if you wanted to slip past for a couple drinks."

He grumbled, but let himself be pulled along; it wasn't like he was losing anything by indulging Alfor's whim on that. 

Everything went black, and for a short, disjointed moment, Shiro was stuck with one foot mired in Zarkon's memories and the other aware of the lion's desperate attempts to pull him inward, hanging on weakly with everything it could muster.

There was nothing but light, a blank, endless space that was the opposite of empty somehow - _everything_ spreading out into infinity, blindingly bright, the lion a desperate panic trying to keep a grip.

Everything else connected was a mix of confusion, panic, and disorientation, a cacophony that didn't scratch his numb resolve.

None of it mattered.

If this didn't work, if the Black Paladin and Savior Of Galaxies couldn't save his own family, then the rest was pointless.

The lion was trying to pull him back, but he wasn't returning alone, whatever that meant in the end.

If a little bit of the sea of _everything_ around them could bring a cat back to life ageless and immortal, then the full expanse had to be able to bring Honerva and their almost-born son back to him. She had been sure of it, and she'd known it better than any other. If the others hadn't been so attached to their status quo, had been willing to actually _help_ instead of blind fear and refusing to listen to either of them, this wouldn't have even been necessary. 

He had a brief pang of doubt when the familiar dark mass flooded around, appearing from the blinding expanse, leaving him with nothing but clinging to the only things precious to him anymore as it wrapped around them hungrily.

Visceral panic rose even as everything went black; even the Komar was a small thing next to the mass, and Shiro recoiled away from it, scrabbling madly for anything that wasn't it - the Black Lion's power threaded through him, the flickering lights of the others, something that was a connection back to reality and away from the pit Zarkon had fallen into. 

He was exhausted, hurt everywhere, wrung out, but he was _alive_ , the pain and nausea proof of it. As he found his bearings again on the cockpit, his armor, the stars outside, the faint flickers of others tied to him, he was thankful for the trauma-fueled panic. He was sure it'd be the first, hopefully last and only time he was thankful for it, but he was back where he belonged.

Everyone else, Lion and Paladin alike, were little more than faint flickers, weak little embers.

The Lions had thrown everything they had into keeping their Paladins with them, even as the Komar had sapped them to the brink of oblivion. 

Zarkon was still out there, and Haggar.

Voltron was still together somehow - the lions clinging to each other the way they'd clung to their Paladins.

If they'd held together, then he could pull the others back, and they could return the favor for the lions.

He took a deep breath, focusing outward, trying to channel the raw manic energy of survivalist panic into pulling the others back; Keith, who'd hovered and herded him like Alfor had tried to do for Zarkon, Pidge who'd taken on enough for someone twice her age and shown the universe what it meant to be a Holt, Lance who would laugh anything off and throw himself into protecting others no matter how terrified he was pretending he wasn't, Hunk who cared about everyone enough to keep going no matter how terrified he was loudly announcing he was. 

Voltron came from the Lions and Paladins both pulling together, a whole greater than the sum of any of its parts. No matter how strong he was, he was a dust speck in the face of the universe without the others, human and mechanical god-beast alike. Zarkon had weakened himself to self-destruction the moment he'd thrown that away, and Shiro wasn't about to let Zarkon take it away from _them_.

The lions had done enough putting themselves between the squishy humans and the ravening void - the _Beast_ that they all had faced before - that he managed to drag the other humans out of being unconscious and lost in someone else's memories first. 

_His people._

His team.

His lion.

His power.

His cause, his Castle, his battle, his friends behind them, his home, his friends' homes, _his universe_ , and Zarkon would not take it from any of them. 

" _Make all things yours! Make other lives and dreams and hopes yours! Protect them! Save them! Bring them into the sheepfold! Walk the gale for them! Keep away the wolf! My dreams! My brother! My family! My land! My world! How dare you try to take these things, because they are mine!_ "

He managed a feral, half-sane smile at the Black Lion's callback echo of a quote from his own memory, the first flicker of awareness from it as he threw his own being into pulling it back, as the lights of the cockpit flickered and came back alive. 

He could feel Zarkon, too, a riddled mass, rotted pieces of twisted, distorted obsessions and every ugly emotion out of control, stitched together with the alien void. The bits of the Black Lion's essence that had been merged with him were all that kept some sense of his own identity, still not enough to keep him from being a twisted mockery, something dark and hungry re-animating a broken shell.

Zarkon wanted what he saw as his back, the ache of isolation turned into a possessive obsession, twisted and amplified enough that his power-drunk will was even putting reins on the empty, endless hunger that wove through him like cordyceps fungus through an ant. He was grasping at the relay, pushing against Shiro's momentary lapse like a rabid animal.

Shiro snarled right back.

The vicious battle came down to a deadlock.

Zarkon was dying.

Zarkon knew he was dying, and was wrapping every bit of his being he could into trying to force roots back into the Black Lion and Voltron, to claw Shiro out of his place and cling to it as a way to live. Shiro threw everything he had into pushing back - _His people! His team! His Lions!_ \- he had everyone else's power behind him, Voltron's power, could feel the ties and what held Zarkon to this world, if he just pushed a little further - _His home! His universe!_ \- even with Zarkon clinging to him, intent on taking him down with, if he could shove a little further, he could sever it completely and ensure Zarkon could never hurt anyone again - 

He didn't realize he'd blacked out, losing awareness of the cockpit and the stars outside, until the Black Lion was latching its claws into him and yanking back, pulling him off of Zarkon and away from the hungering void again. 

The Arizona sun hung overhead, a dramatic transition to heat from cool shade. He was trying to keep as level as possible, attention more on the tiny bundle of iridescent feathers in his hands than on where he was walking. The hummingbird was still mostly stunned and struggling, but was having occasional fits of squirming and trying to stab the "giant" hands curled around it. "It's alright, little guy. I'm not here to hurt you. I know this's pretty scary for you."

The Black Lion's hold was dark; he'd gotten in at an odd hour when the Alteans would be asleep, without the energy to deal with proper arrival, so he'd simply set up a hammock and slept there. He was awakened early in the Altean morning by the god-beast yanking on the edge of his awareness about something, pointing his attention insistently as he grumbled and got to his feet. The impressions were garbled, there was something else in the lion that didn't belong but wasn't hostile, he needed to do something, and for some reason it wanted him to get into one of the smaller maintenance hatches.

He hadn't managed to get the barracks door open. The keypad could work with just a fingerprint, but that was a little hard to do when both hands were occupied with faintly squeaking struggling feathers, leaving him attempting a comedy routine of trying to find some way to push buttons on the keypad without his hands for a good five minutes before the door opened, Adam already staring at him in vaguely amused confusion as he had a boot propped against the wall trying to push buttons with his heel or toe, whichever he managed to get on the pad. "What on Earth are you _doing_?"

" _Alfor!_ " He was fighting the instinct to yell for the Altean, stifling it down to a loud stage whisper as he swept into Alfor's study to a confused blink. "Where do you have - veterinary services or something?! Who takes care of your animals when they get hurt?" He didn't give Alfor the time to do more than open his mouth to ask why, holding a hand down; one of Allura's mice was curled up in it, glowering at the world and huddled, red on pale fur from a gash on its side that was now mixed with a bit of his blood from a couple bites he'd ignored. 

They'd hastily pulled together a hot water bottle, padded a towel around and over it into a shoebox, and gouged a few holes into it; he was in the passenger seat with the box, half because he'd been hovering over the box and not inclined to give it up, and half because Adam had refused to let him drive when he was in that much of an agitated hurry. "You know the rehab center may not be able to do much - they're pretty fragile, and the way he was moving, he must've hit the window pretty hard." 

Alfor had almost moved to take the mouse from him, then thought better of it and just tugged his wrist down to get a better angle. "I'll take care of him." It was easy to forget, sometimes, what the Altean was capable of, particularly with how often Alfor ended up in medbay from some stupid stunt he couldn't fix himself; there was an odd warmth and light from Alfor's hand cupped over the little mouse. Alfor was distantly concentrating for a few ticks that drug on forever; he couldn't see the Princess's pet, but could feel the mouse's breathing even out as little feet found purchase. Alfor smiled as the light faded, then yelped and yanked his hand back with his own new bleeding bite, the mouse now sitting up with an offended nose-twitch. 

There was haze and not much else. It was like either going under anesthesia or coming out of it, he wasn't sure which; empty drifting with no actual sense of - anything, just a disembodied sense of weightlessness and something bigger wrapped around him.

There were stars in the emptiness, stars and the bright streaks of nebulas and auroras, phenomenon that shouldn't coexist at all logically. 

Something rumbled in the emptiness, the starscape shifting with a drunken, vertigo-tilting feeling, like a malfunctioning gravity generator that couldn't decide which way was supposed to be down. 

The next thing Shiro knew, he was touching feet on a familiar glassy plane surrounded by stars, out of his armor and with nothing feeling quite _real_. As the disorientation settled, memory of what they'd been doing flooded back.

Zarkon.

They'd been fighting Zarkon, and Zarkon had been trying to get back in. 

He whirled to scan the field, the image of his prosthetic glowing to life with sparks trailing like stardust. "We've beaten you here once, and we'll do it again!"

For a moment there was a large shadow over him, the echo of the Black Lion, then it seemed to just blur and melt, a mass that was putting great effort into trying to reshape itself and shrink. It was still massive as it fumbled through forming limbs and something more intelligible than a mass of starscape, a lion made of void and starscapes with aurora wings, with pointed ears and something off about its build beyond just being made of space itself. A massive mane of nebula-dust trailed off, scattering light around it.

The lion huffed and shook its head, an exasperated noise that echoed with odd tones, the strange music that happened when stellar radiation was shifted into an audible range. 

Shiro blinked. "...Is something wrong? Did Zarkon get in." 

The shape looked at and through him, then turned, glancing back to make sure he was following. It was walking at a leisurely pace, although there was an occasional irritable rumble that cracked like solar flares. It was heading toward something else on the endless plain, their footsteps almost soundless. 

The glassy light was warped, not an even flat, twisted around something as if there'd either been an impact or something being pulled towards it, Shiro wasn't sure which. In the middle of it was a tattered mass, something that wasn't managing a full shape heaving, pieces of black and red and violet and stardust forming a vague outline that wasn't quite holding together.

It was a pale echo of what he was used to, but he could feel, knew the presence.

The lion sat on the edge of the warped space, tail ticking; there was frustration, grief, and a deep sense of something _wrong_ , wrong in a way that made it simmer with anger. 

He took a careful step down into the warped space, minding footing, and glanced back to the lion; Black bowed its head slightly, but made no move to stop him. He wasn't sure what he was doing or what he expected to find, but he edged closer to Zarkon's ragged phantom, until he was standing beside it.

There was no reaction from the shadow, and now that he was close, part of what felt off stood out - it was hollow, an outline and a shell with nothing solid inside it. He wasn't sure what that meant in this realm, besides some kind of floundering attempt to parse what was going on into something vaguely intelligible.

He looked back over his shoulder at the lion; the creature hadn't moved.

"...Is he supposed to be -," Shiro glanced down, unsettled. "...er, hollow?"

The lion growled, head hunching down between starry shoulders, and shook its wings with a low discordant tone. 

"I'm gonna take that as a no." There were definitely shreds of something familiar, but there wasn't much sense of actual _presence_ to the shade. He knelt down next to it, hoping a closer look would make it make more sense.

It didn't, really.

He looked back to the lion again. "Is this safe to touch?"

The lion tilted its head thoughtfully, then shrugged its wings with a very noncommittal distorted chime. 

"....Well that's comforting." It didn't seem _concerned_ about it, and still hadn't moved to stop him or pull him away, so he turned his attention back to the phantom, putting the prosthetic in one of the open spaces until his hand was in the middle of the empty shell, carefully not touching the parts that did seem to be there.

There was a strange, light electric tingle, but not much else. He pulled his hand back; the phantom still hadn't reacted to anything, still on the ground. 

Shiro gathered himself and poked the part of the phantom's shoulder that was actually there.

There was more than just an electric jolt; he almost lost track of surroundings in a sudden wave of fear, grief, and worry, a pit of anxiety and _guilt_ that wasn't his own, and fell back away from it, landing on his ass next to the shade and breaking contact.

Even that hadn't been very intelligible, and faded almost as fast as it'd come. He wasn't sure what it meant, but he knew that when he'd smacked into someone else's emotions and memories on the relay, it'd usually lingered longer than that. 

It was like the shade was an imprint; a shed skin.

He got to his feet, dusting his shoulder in nervous habit, and walked back to the lion, sitting next to it with his legs crossed, staring at the phantom in deep thought.

He'd had plenty of reason to pay attention to Coran's explanations of the energy exchange and how the lions interacted with their Paladins; it'd been different for him than the others. Whatever Haggar had been doing had been chewing bits out of him energetically and warping things. Longer investigation had led them to find that Ulaz had left something in the arm's energy system that slowed it down, and he didn't want to think about what she could've done without the Blade's interference. 

When he'd woken up the Black Lion, the lion had started nudging at the damage itself, feeding bits of its own energy in to try to speed his recovery, a process that also inadvertently strengthened the bond by intertwining their essence faster than usual. Coran had noted that there were some places with worse damage where it'd been trying to rebuild understructure in ways that didn't look right next to the rest of his system, but would be consistent with Galran systems - the lion using the only other mortal template it had to kludge something together. 

He'd run into shreds of Zarkon's memories before - occasional fragments after he'd taken the time to let the Lion show him bits of the past, minor things that didn't exactly give him much useful information where he still wasn't sure how to feel about them. From what Coran said and a few things some of the others had mentioned, it was part of how the lions worked; the bond was an energy _exchange_ , and they ended up with echoes of their Paladins' memories and emotions brought along with the energy they shared.  
He’d fought Zarkon before in this realm, a state very different from just encountering memories.

"...Is he supposed to be - actually here? Completely?" He jerked his head toward the shadow, faintly nervous about that prospect.

The lion growled again and nodded.

"...So when a Paladin dies..." He trailed off, unsure if he wanted to finish the thought and unsure how to feel.

The lion nodded again, and then turned to stare at him; there was something disconcerting about it, like there was a point about more than just Zarkon and the lion had seriously expected him to figure it out sooner.

They did not abandon what they had bonded themselves to. 

"...And you'd be keeping him, even after everything."

The lion's head dipped sideways, and he could feel one of its tangled attempts at communication permeating everything, something complicated that was a mess to detangle. There was some frustrated impression that Shiro managed to translate out to wanting to sit on Zarkon until he stopped being an idiot, and awareness of more than one other factor warping things, that what Shiro had faced both was and was not entirely Zarkon - distorted, warped, exaggerated, and manipulated, that were being compared to the way the lion and Allura had spent time weeding out the witch's handiwork in Shiro and some of the bits of darker, warped energy that she'd left in him. 

Zarkon was a moronic fixer-upper that was going to need a lot of work, but was still one of the Black Lion's paladins, and the lions did not abandon their paladins.  
And the lion shot him another pointed look, still waiting for him to figure out whatever it thought he shouldn't need it to explain.

"Whatever else was involved - it's still hanging onto him, isn't it."

The lion snarled, baring teeth made of blue-white solar fire. It did not appreciate something else harming and stealing _its people_. There was something else that needed explanation, a history he needed to learn, but the lion was certain there would be plenty of time to get to that. 

"...You know I normally don't hear you this clearly, unless you want me to come down to the hangar for another bonding session after this is over."

The snarl vanished, as the lion stared at him, and then -

Flopped over on its side dramatically with a despairing set of jangling tones of pure disbelief.

Shiro was entirely unsure what to make of it. "...Uh." 

The lion made another discordant noise, then got back to its feet in front of him, engulfing his head in a massive stardust paw. 

He was not going back anytime soon, because apparently complete idiotic stubbornness and lack of self-preservation instinct was just a natural outgrowth of the qualities the Black Lion wanted in its Paladins, and the lion was _incredibly_ certain he was lucky it had pulled him back when it did.

There was also something else, another tangle that slowly resolved out into the metaphysical psychic equivalent of speaking slowly with small words.

He'd been pouring his own energy back into the lion. That was an energy exchange that was fairly normal.

The komar had severely drained the lion and him, leaving both parts of the exchange running on fumes.

Normal combat and weaponry and keeping moving were still viable because of some sort of resonance and amplification between them, if that had been the entirety of it he would've been on his ass for a few weeks recovering.

Then Zarkon had dug into him and he'd dug into Zarkon, leading to another factor that was damaging him and tearing bits out, and him clinging to something that was pulling away, pouring even _more_ of his own energy out.

There was a bit of something that came across like calculus written in hexadecimal about energetic conversion and interactions that resolved into a very simplified model, comparing things he _had_ seen and what happened when something physical ended up dumping out more energy than it had and tried to keep going, which entailed converting the physical form to energy.

The lion lifted its paw just enough to give him another, very pointed look.

He stared back at it, bouncing off everything and seeing it all add up but taking his time letting the end result of the equation resolve. It wasn't something he could avoid for very long, the surreal absurdity of it all blunting it.

"..........I'm dead?"

There was an irritable rumble;"dead" as Shiro knew it was not the right word, it was _possible_ to put him back but difficult, if everything fell together right it was still an entirely possible outcome eventually it would just take a long time to get there, he was still very much a living being, just in a different state than what he'd been before. "Dead" was being corrected to some kind of transcendant state, becoming something of pure spirit and essence in the lion's care.

There had been a time when the lion had many such smaller beings to shepherd that it had brought to itself, a hazy time long gone on the other side of some disaster; he'd just taken a short and messy route that may or may not be permanent depending on a set of variables and the actions of others, a tangle of threads of possibility that Shiro didn't want to think on too hard because that way lay becoming Slav. 

For the time being, he'd passed out of physical existence and become a being of spirit.

"...So I'm dead." It wasn't the kind of afterlife he'd ever been expecting, but then, he'd kind of lapsed into a sort of half-agnostic going-through-the-motions on what he'd been raised with; he was pretty sure this wouldn't shed any light on the normal process of death and rebirth or whatever happened to souls that passed on, since there was a very large entity of stardust and nebulas that was very visibly interfering in the normal process in his case. Still, transmigration and going from one life to another as something different weren't foreign concepts at all. 

Even if the lion was still nudging him that no, this might not be permanent, something something probability something something possible outcomes and other threads of this reality. 

He was starting to understand how Slav got the way he was, if that sort of thing was something he was always aware of. 

"..... So what now?" There was plenty they still needed to do, after all. "I mean, I can't just sit here waiting for something to happen, there has to be something I can do to help everyone." Even if he was in a weird awkward nonphysical place, he wasn't about to abandon the others, not when Haggar was still out there and who knew what else, nevermind Zarkon's conspicuous absence from the Black Lion's grasp. 

The lion put a paw on his head again, in a much less abstract 'stay put' gesture. 

"I am not staying put! Zarkon's down but he might still be out there and if he got drug back once they might be able to do it again, _Haggar_ is still out there, the rest of the warlords and upper command of the Empire isn't just going to go away - everyone else still _needs_ me." 

The lion sighed, and flopped on him. If it'd been a mundane lion, it would've been something like the effect when a very large dog forgets its not a lapdog, but Shiro was very aware that the lion knew damn well what it was doing, and flopping over on him to literally sit on him so he couldn't go anywhere was the point. 

He was still chewed up himself and anything he might try to do would be beyond his current abilities in a state he had no idea how to navigate, the others had things they needed to do, and at this point the most useful thing he could do was _rest_ and take care of himself, and the lion punctuated that mental dump with a low rumble and some scratchier tones, staying put flopped over across him, a warm mass that didn't seem like it should be solid but very much was.

"...Does this mean Keith's taking over?"

The lion huffed; the others would need time to recover, and the lions themselves were still chewed up. Time might not work the same in this realm, but it'd still be "time" before the lions and everyone else would be recovered enough on the physical side to start sorting things out. 

But eventually, the lion was going to haul Keith over, by the scruff of his neck if need be. They already had everything planned out between them to keep Voltron together and active.

"I'm going to be able to talk to him, right? This - this's going to hit him pretty hard." He knew Keith was capable of a great deal, but Keith had only just started coming out of his shell and accepting others. He still had all the little flinches of fear of getting invested in people only to lose them, expecting awful things to happen and half-believing that it was somehow his fault for being around them. He _knew_ Keith had latched onto him as something stable, and that it wouldn't help Keith's state for him to vanish like this.  
There was a nudge about how hard it had been for the lion to communicate with the volume it had, and a hanging question of if Shiro had any idea how to communicate like that, mixed with some kind of tangle about the structure of how this worked - where he was in the structure of things was difficult to reach from the physical side, and could be dangerous if the Paladin trying hadn't established a solid, strong bond and grown enough themselves to be able to handle it. 

He could try, but it was difficult to get things across at best. 

"...Can I at least know what's going on with them?" 

The lion shifted, a living weighted blanket. It would keep him as aware as it could while he was adjusting and learning to exist as he was now. 

"So basically, I _could_ help and find things to do, but I need to learn how first."

There was an affirmative rumble.

"Well...That's something, at least." 

.......................................................................................................................

The Black Lion drifted more dormant, and Shiro expected to doze off into whatever resembled sleep for this state. 

It didn't work. 

Instead, his attempt at dozing left him losing track of the glassy plain the Black Lion maintained, even the semblance of his normal body that he'd had; he could still feel its presence, a massive warm starry darkness that he was tethered to curled around him, and then - 

There was everything. Nothing solid, nothing that he could resolve into a normal equivalent to sensory input, but it was far from empty, thrumming with billions of threads and lights and presences and bits of half-formed and unformed things, too much to focus on any one thing out of it. It was overwhelming, and he floundered with nothing to get a grip on or center his attention on.

There was something larger out there, but it was almost worse - a jangling mass of potential and change and bits of things swirling about. Whatever it was brushed past with something that was almost like the way the lion talked in his head, but it was more than he could trace anything out of, several lifetimes worth of concepts and ideas and queries being dumped on him all at once. 

And then, he was himself, and solid, in a large room, quiet except for a faint white noise hum and occasional electronic beeps and chirps.

The transition was jarring enough that it took him a few seconds to get his bearings enough to actually look at his surroundings and recognize it.

It was the bridge of the Enterprise, old Next Generation era, and there was some kind of unfamiliar small green alien lounging in the captain's chair, grinning smugly. There was a creeping certainty that it was whatever had just brushed past him.

"Awwww. Aren't you the cutest little infant."

Shiro blinked at them a couple times, trying to find words for the situation.

"...What the fuck?"

The alien blinked and gave him a blithe shrug. "What? You didn't understand me when I tried to talk to you normally, so I figured being all small and new and all, that maaaaaybe doing something familiar would make more sense to you." They gestured at the bridge around them. "This was one of those comfort things, right?"

Shiro folded his arms, leaning back away. "Right. Who are you?"

The 'small' alien laughed. "Well, I already tried to introduce myself, so let's just go with 'Bob', shall we? It's what I usually use with mortals." 

"Bob." Even if he was ruffled by being referred to as an 'infant', he still couldn't shake the feeling he should be looking for An Adult.

"What? It's simple, it's easy to remember, and it amuses me." 

He was starting to wonder if Q had been based on some kind of actual encounter with a real entity.

"Nah, I don't think I ever poked any of those writers, but I'm flattered you'd think that!" Bob grinned. 

Shiro definitely needed An Adult. 

He felt something change behind him as the Black Lion pulled itself into the construct space. Another bout of it trying to shift around to cobble together some kind of coherent form was visible out of the corner of his eye, but this time it went for humanoid and taller than him. He half-glanced back and almost wished he hadn't; it was using Zarkon as a template, still partly made out of starscapes and trailing nebula-dust. 

"Anyway, I noticed you flailing around and all and figured I'd poke in, say hi, see what the new fledgling on the proverbial block was and all."

"...Okay, this might be rude to ask, but what are you?"

"I told you. I'm Bob." Bob lounged back in the captain's chair. "I could try to tell you again, but I don't think you'd understand it any better the second time."

He gave the 'little' alien a dull, unimpressed stare; it only seemed to amuse the creature more. 

Bob snickered, then looked up, over his shoulder. "You know, it's rude to carry on a conversation that doesn't include everyone in the room." 

The Black Lion rolled its eyes with a very Galran rumble of frustration. 

Bob leaned his chin on one hand, giving the lion a greasy smile. "What? Mister Tying-Myself-To-Mortals-Is-Part-Of-My-Basic-Nature can't manage to use words?"

The lion hunched, narrowing eyes at Bob. "I do not _like_ words. They are flat, and narrow, and - _hollow_." It came out stilted, the lion fumbling for phrasing with a couple irritated hand gestures.

"Really. How _do_ you manage to work with your squishy little mortals."

"I keep things small. They understand fine." 

"Right." Bob gave the lion a humoring eyebrow raise. "Anyway, as I was saying, you're kinda on your own here for the time being. I like this multiverse, really I do, it's been grand, but anybody who isn't pretty established with a way to interact in the whole 'material plane' space trying to poke at our little problem is just gonna destabilize things _way_ worse.......and since most of those are pretty tethered to specific places, your granddad included, that means it's pretty much on you guys for now." Bob shrugged, flopping back in the chair.

Shiro wasn't sure what they were talking about, but he had some creeping suspicions and the feeling things were worse than they seemed on levels far deeper than just the Empire.

"And this does not bother you." The lion was tiredly exasperated, but not surprised by Bob's flippancy.

"Well, if this place unravels, I just skip town to another multiverse. Maybe see if I can find one like this place, hang out with some version of that Q fellow or something. I mean, you kinda stuck yourself with a zero sum there - you lose in _one_ reality and all of them go piff."

"I stop it from unraveling at the right time in _one_ reality and it counters all where we lose." The lion folded its arms. 

"Oooo. So you're going for the high-stakes gamble. You're only going to get that shot in a few probabilities, you know." 

The lion just gave a derisive snort, confident in whatever it was planning. 

Shiro was trying not to glance between them, suddenly very much feeling like a small child listening to the adults argue.

"Oh don't give me that look. I'd actually _love_ to see you all and your little pets pull this one off."

"Pets?" Shiro wrinkled his nose, and Bob's attention went to him again.

"No offense, Shiro, buddy, pal, but when you people are all tied up in physical shells, well." Bob gestured at him. "You know." Shiro could feel the lion mirroring his irritation, and Bob's eyes flicked up over his shoulder. "Xaery, Xaery - that was what the mortals back in your old universe called you, right?"

The lion's expression and mood soured more.

"Honestly I love what you and yours do with the squishy little things; the stuff they come up with when you guys get involved, the heroics and all, now _that's_ evolution." Bob gestured at Shiro. "It's always refreshing when some of the squishy mortals actually remember what got them past fumbling with sticks into abstract thought and language and go with the instinct instead of getting all mired up in all the debates and justifications, you know? Especially when they Get It enough to go pushing above and beyond." There was a thumb jerked at Shiro, and he wasn't sure if he should be ruffled or flattered. "Little surprised you're trying to do the parent gig while all this is going on, but sometimes things just happen, eh?"

There was a pause as the lion seemed to be trying to glare through Bob. Shiro was quite sure now was not the time to ask about the name Bob had used for it. 

"I know what I'm doing."

"Of course you do." Bob gave another greasy, humoring smile. "Well, I guess I'll just see how this all works out - do let me know if there's anything you need that I can actually _do_ , will you?" 

Bob grinned back at the lion's exasperated glare, and then there was a weird vertigo sensation for a half-second before everything went weird and nothing-everything again for a short gap before he was back on the glassy plane. The Black Lion was back in the starscape-feline shape, tail lashing with trails of sparks, pointed impressions of ears barely visible poking flat back out of its mane. 

Shiro flopped down sitting next to it. "So." He draped his arms over his knees, watching the starscape for a few minutes. "...What the Hell was that?"

The lion raised its head, and seemed to be considering how to get its point across for a good minute or two before it finally resorted to a distasteful, long-suffering, ".... _Bob._ "

It shouldn't have been an explanation, but somehow, it was.

"Is he dangerous?"

The lion tilted its head, making an odd tonal 'eh' noise.

"You didn't seem too happy to see him."

There was a long pause as the lion stared off into the middle distance ahead of it before sharing anything; it was a simple enough concept. Bob poked things to see what they did, and the Black Lion did not like people touching its stuff, particularly when it was working on managing something often delicate with possibilities that went spectacularly wrong.  
"So...he's like an annoying older sibling."

The lion thought on that, and nudged it as not quite right, but only in that the relation wasn't very close.

There was something like time passing; the Lion stayed there, occasionally glancing over, waiting for something. Shiro was mulling over what he'd heard of their conversation, trying to decide what was even worth pursuing right now. 

"... So. What's going on that would unravel the multiverse?"

There was a glowing ripple as the lion wrinkled its nose; there was a sense of everything as many interacting pieces that all impacted each other and changed courses to make different possibilities and different threads, with something in motion that could/would lead to disaster, other things in motion that could/would prevent it, and a few things in motion that could/would undo it when it happened. 

It wasn't much of an answer and Shiro could easily see where any attempt at clarification would pass into the stage where everything turned into an overloading slurry. "...This is why Slav is ... Slav, isn't it."

The lion snorted.

Shiro sighed; there really was no way to pursue that right now, and the lion seemed confident enough in whatever it was up to. He wasn't sure how much the lion actually wanted to share about its past after it'd been poked at the way Bob had, but he also wasn't sure what else to do.

"So - the meteor Alfor made you out of... it wasn't from this universe?" He looked sideways, uncertain.

The lion flopped down, head on its paws, and gave a half-nod. 

There was a melancholy to it; a memory of pain and raw panic, the five of them clinging together and clinging to the only solid anchor they had to try to hold together, momentum keeping it free-falling through existence with only occasional pauses as it caught on something - 

And then one smaller presence, reaching in to pull out the snarls and sooth the storm that'd come from the chaos, moving the anchor to somewhere safe.

Shiro frowned, thoughtful. "...Alfor saved you."

The lion gave an affirmative huff.

It made a sort of sense that the lions would be older than Alfor's work, although it was also a strange kind of perspective. He wasn't sure if the thought of other universes beyond theirs was an exciting thought, or quietly horrifying for the implications that something had happened bad enough to throw beings like them careening half-dead across realities.  
"So...What was it like? Where you're from?" He wasn't sure if the lion would be able to answer in any way that'd come across coherently, but it was worth a shot.

The lion made a faint, unhappy noise; there was a hazy jumble, like a tapestry scorched and tattered. There had been a world - worlds even, there had been _people_ , the lion had many smaller lights that had worked with it as mortal people and then become more.

Now, it was gone, hazy fragments of memory and the nagging sense of absence, all scathed away before Alfor had found them. 

This was their home now, the reality where they were starting over. They would not let it fall. 

Shiro stared at the image of his prosthetic. This new state was strange; if he thought about it, he could _feel_ where things were still healing from Haggar's efforts, the way he would've normally felt the twinges and aches of nerves and muscles slowly going out on him. More than that, he could feel outward around him - the lion was insulating him from the awareness of _everything_ , but its presence was more solid and palpable than it had ever been in the cockpit. 

There was an exhaustion laying over everything, something Shiro had grown so used to being a part of his existence that it hadn't occurred to him before to consider that here, it was not his, but coming from _outside_ himself. It was a disturbing thought - Haggar had tampered with it and somehow managed to make it much less of a factor in his life, and he'd been uncomfortable enough with that tampering that having it return here had gone almost unnoticed, a return to "normalcy". 

The lion itself was tired, threadbare, worn out and slowly healing, the Komar re-opening old wounds that it was only barely recovered from.

"Seems like we have more in common than I'd thought." 

The lion rumbled quietly next to him, with a few thin, tired tones.

............................................................................................................

The lion grew stronger, gradually. Shiro was thankful for it past just worry about the strange being - the more the lion recovered, the less time he spent exposed to the vastness of _everything_ without any kind of buffer or solid anchor. There was more than just the sense that if he tried he could hear the thoughts of everything in existence, physical or not, there were echoes and flickers of other universes, other versions of events, all jumbled and garbled too much to actually pick anything out of it. Sometimes he wasn’t even sure which one he’d originally come from. 

Even when he tried to pull inward, away from it, his own memory was little refuge. It was all to easy to slip from something truly familiar to something that was _him_ but the wrong version, something that felt true but didn't match the rest of his memory; by comparison, the incidents of tangling up with some of Zarkon's memories - including some that contradicted and had to also be from different realities - were _easy_ to sort out and detangle. 

The lion spent a great deal of time - such as he could distinguish time - "asleep" for a while, slow to respond and groggy, prone to drifting randomly. As it slowly became more aware and present, it became easier to pull back from the overwhelming sprawl of existence, although it always remained background noise. The tangle of memories creeping in from other realities didn't exactly shift, but the lion began nudging in, guiding him on detangling the threads and identifying what pieces matched with each other where.  
He'd always felt closer to everything in space, like if he just spent a little more time there, he could look into eternity and find the secrets of the universe and the meaning of existence. He'd never expected it to happen so literally, or to be that difficult and existentially disorienting.

After a while he learned to tell when the lion's attention had gone more to physical reality and the others; at first it was just little flickers of the lion observing where he could feel the presences of the other lions more than anything else, then a growing tired exasperation with waiting. 

Keith was avoiding it. Shiro wasn't surprised, although he was worried about Keith's state; even in a better place, Keith was resistant to even the insinuation of "taking his place", and with Keith's mess of trauma and fears wrapped up in loss, avoiding the Black Lion was Keith’s own form of stubborn insistence that he would just be waiting for Shiro, who'd be back any day now. He didn't need to clearly pick up on Keith to read what was going on.

Nothing else the lions had planned to keep things moving would work until Keith moved, and they couldn't force him, just keep nudging and waiting for him to calm down and focus enough to make an actual decision rather than running away from it. 

It was impossible to miss when Keith finally did settle in the pilot's seat to wake the Black Lion fully; it was like a charge went through the lion, the structure Shiro was anchored to and sheltering in solidifying and strengthening. Keith was distant, filtered through the lion from the "other side" and wrapped in a storm of fears and doubts; Shiro caught edges, here and there.

" _I can't do this._ "

"Yes you can! I know you can!" Shiro wasn't sure how shouting at someone physical and alive from the strange astral space was supposed to work; it didn't seem to be reaching Keith at all, the tiny slivers that made it through getting caught and blocked out by the walls Keith himself was keeping. 

" _I can't lead them like you._ " 

"Stop panicking and breathe! You can do this! You don't _have_ to be me!" 

It didn't even seem to get close.

A strangled noise of frustration echoed through the indistinct space; the lion nudged at him. It was concerned and exasperated, but it would take care of Keith the way it had looked after Shiro.

They both knew Shiro remembered very well how much time and effort the lion had spent prodding at him when his insecurities and fears started chewing on him, pushing in to be a support whether he was trying to let it in or not.

Shiro settled, although he still wanted to fret in a circle; he _did_ trust the Black Lion to take care of Keith, but not being able to do or say anything himself was torture, the first time it had really sunk in what had happened.

Somehow the lion could put a paw over his head without even pulling either of them into manifesting. He needed time, Keith needed time, they had time, the Lion would handle things and knew what it was doing. 

If he wanted to do anything himself, he'd need to learn how to navigate the state he was in now.

.............................................................................

Learning how to function as a disembodied soul being metaphysically baby-harness carried by a deity of time and space proved to be...

About as complicated as he should have expected, if he stopped and thought about it. For once, he had something he couldn't really look at and feel like it couldn't be that bad, compared to surviving extensive astrophysics classes and Zarkon's arenas. He still wasn't about to let a little thing like dying and ascending to a different plane of existence that didn't function under any of the basic laws of reality, sensory input, and basic interaction he was used to stop him.

There'd been a little while where, even from the 'wrong side' of the lion, he was picking up on worrying amounts of Keith's cycling panic.

Then the lion's attention had focused that way. The occasional glimmers of Keith’s tempestuous mental state started settling after that, slowly, and the lion's only response to what had happened was a grouchy-smug impression of paw-batting Keith until the stupid fell out.

He wasn't sure how the lion had gotten that to _work_ with Keith, but Keith was slowly returning to a more normal level of pent-up anxiety and was still cooperating with the lion.

Then there was an odd tug, something that set whatever passed for Shiro's nerves vibrating like spiderwebs with something brushing past them. The lion's attention froze and fixated, a pulled-in storm of probabilities and gauging that Shiro knew better than to stick his metaphorical head into. He settled for concerned prodding; he knew the lion could split its attention multiple directions easily if it wanted to, and he wanted to know what was going on, even if there probably wasn't much he could do.

He got enough attention for a response.

Something was trying to get the lion's attention, desperately pulling on ghosts of a connection as if it were Shiro. 

The nerve-tugging took on new meaning, and Shiro learned that "skin crawling" when there wasn't skin exactly was worse, a shudder that went through his existence. He didn't need context to know where something like that would come from; the witch was up to something, using whatever she'd stolen from his arm and the pieces she'd ripped out of his energy.

The lion was less creeped out and alarmed, weighing options in thoughtful consternation, and Shiro got the feeling of a distracted paw holding him, an implied command to cool it and calm down.

It wasn't an easy feat when most of the ways he was used to snapping out of something involved breathing exercises or physical exertion, but it was also strangely easier for the lion to reach in and pull on his trains of thought, sharing bits of what it had gotten from the 'call'. 

Desperation, fear, worry for the others, the gnawing dread of never seeing them or the lions again, wanting more than anything to help, fighting with the resignation of a seemingly hopeless situation.

Who or whatever the call was coming from, they were an unwitting and oblivious pawn, and - 

there was a messy snarl of possibilities and probabilities, easily millions of variations on what could be, permutations through the reactions of others, angles and bank-shots into different outcomes that were better or worse, overwhelming and endless.

The lion did realize it'd swamped Shiro, after whatever passed for a short span of time in that space, and suddenly pulled back the flood of information, carefully separating it out into pieces and fighting with it to break it down into chunks Shiro would understand, deciding which was relevant and which would be too much.

' _Look, I trust you. Is this something you can work with?_ ' As uncomfortable and violated as - whatever this was made Shiro feel in base concept, the entity that was trying to call the Black Lion was as much a victim as any of the witch's other experiments. Shiro couldn't bring himself to take out his trauma on someone else she'd screwed over, and didn't like the idea of abandoning anybody in that desperate a state.

There was a pause, and then - an affirmation that grew more certain; not only could the lion work with it, it was something they might need to get the best winning outcome.  
' _Then what are we waiting for?_ '

The lion's mood brightened, brassy, confident, and proud of its tiny things.


End file.
